Behmann: How the Internet of Things promotes collaborative innovation

My first exposure to the concept of the Internet of Things, or IoT, came back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I led a team of architects and developers into the design and implementation of a national surveillance system for a global telecom carrier in Canada.

The system had three major functions for real-time monitoring of telecom facilities such as satellite base stations and cable stations. Facilities alarms were monitored in real time via data acquisition systems with hundreds of digital and analog points identifying change of status or crossing defined limits. Such a change could have minor or major impact on traffic and services, which could have resulted in activating control options such as traffic rerouting. The system had built-in security including user access, functional access, and device and location information, as seen in the image on this page.

Today, so much has been written, discussed and implemented about IoT for many different applications. Typically many of the applications are solutions focusing on addressing one business need, such as fitness with Fitbit, smart thermostats for homes, smart meters or video surveillance.

Imagine the following scenario: An elderly lady wearing an iWatch falls and breaks her leg at her home.

What can the Internet of Things do in this situation? It happens that the elderly lady has sensors and cameras all connected to an IoT system. Her situation is captured by camera. The wearable device and the home have different types of sensors monitoring various things such as home temperature, security, smoke, etc. Because all these sensors and devices are all integrated into an advance IoT system, data is not only captured and sent to the cloud, but various alerts are being sent in real time to her doctor, to the ambulance services and to her "individual health emergency center."